


Jump me, bro?

by paintedrecs



Series: Painted Landscapes (tumblr fics) [9]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek is into it anyway, M/M, Neighbors AU, Nerd Derek, Pining, Stiles is a frat bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 06:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11663361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: Prompted myself with: “I just want a neighborhood AU where Stiles is the bro-iest bro to ever bro and Derek pines after him anyway.”





	Jump me, bro?

**Author's Note:**

> I’m trying to get better about moving my twitterfics over to a more readable format without overthinking them, so we’ll see how that goes. [Can also be found on tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/post/163638403800/jump-me-bro).

****Derek’s house is a couple doors down from what he’s pretty sure is a frat house-wannabe. He’d drop the qualifier—as an undergrad, he’d unfortunately lived close enough to frat row to recognize the distinctive loud parties, music thumping late into the night, a stream of girls constantly flowing in and out the doors, bros drunkenly crooning along to badly-tuned guitars—but as far as he can tell, all of the guys are at least a few years out of college.

Resisting the urge to call the cops with a noise complaint takes some effort. Derek doesn’t particularly want to be _that_ guy, though; he still has to live in this neighborhood. And a part of him, much as he doesn’t want to admit it, simply wishes he’d been invited. It’s not that it sounds like fun, exactly. Derek didn’t enjoy those types of parties when he was in college, and he’s not nearly old enough yet for the nostalgia to kick in. It’s just that...well, it would be nice to be included.

He carefully doesn’t think about the fact that the shift from outright irritation to a sort of wistful longing happened around the time that he saw one particular guy hanging around in front of the house, surrounded by his friends.

Derek does not find frat bros attractive. He never has. He never will. A certain long-limbed guy with an infectious laugh and warm brown eyes won’t change that.

He finds other ways to channel his frustration, some more productive than others. On nights when he takes his trash to the curb, he makes his way down to the overstuffed bins haphazardly jumbled in front of the pseudo-frat house. Under cover of darkness, shielded by the noise pouring through the brightly-lit windows, he sorts through the upper layers of his neighbors’ trash, separating stacks of greasy pizza boxes from sticky piles of beer cans.

It’s primarily to be a good citizen. Every house in the neighborhood has separate recycling bins—they’re even color coded, making it incredibly easy to put the correct materials in the appropriate spot. Derek’s just doing his part for the environment, since his obnoxious neighbors refuse to take a few extra seconds out of their day. At least, that’s what he tells himself when he’s sticking his fingers in strangers’ trash. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t count as trespassing if he’s not actually going _into_ the yard, and he’s not stealing anything. Just...moving things around a little.

The other reason’s one he doesn’t like to dwell on. The rational side of his brain recognizes that the guys in this house don’t even know him, so why would they invite him over? This isn't like high school, when he was the nerd people intentionally ignored. They’re living their lives, he’s living his, and it’s perfectly natural for them to not intersect.

But one night, as Derek slaps the lid of the recycling bin shut, wishing he’d brought a roll of paper towels or maybe even some wet wipes, he looks up and finds one of the bros standing on the front porch, watching him.

Derek freezes in place. He can’t immediately identify the person; from the street, all he can see is a tall, athletic figure backlit by the open front door. He’s expecting to be chased off the property, probably cussed out in the process, but the guy comes down the steps and lifts the lid of the recycling bin, dropping his empty beer can inside.

“Thanks for doing that, bro,” he says. “The guys don’t spend a lotta time thinking about the environment.”

It’s not just _a_ bro. It’s _the_ bro. The one Derek hasn't been able to stop thinking about. His first time speaking to Derek, and it’s because he caught Derek rummaging around in his garbage late at night.

“You’re uh, you’re welcome,” Derek says.

Fortunately, the guy doesn’t seem to care about getting an explanation. He introduces himself instead: _Stiles_. Of course his name would be equally intriguing, Derek thinks, annoyed with himself for even caring about this interaction.

Derek gives his name in turn, wondering if he should point out his house to make his presence here seem less weird, but Stiles doesn’t seem inclined to linger in the cold. He heads back inside, giving Derek a brief, friendly wave before shutting the door again.

It still wasn’t an invitation. Not that Derek would’ve said yes. Probably. But after that, Stiles always takes a minute to say hi when he sees Derek around, even when he's got pretty girls clustered around him.

Derek will nod back, then tear his gaze away, not wanting to see them disappear from view, not wanting to begin cataloguing Stiles’s type.

One morning, when Derek's heading to work, he sees Stiles standing in the street, the hood of an old Jeep open. He’s alternating between sipping from a travel mug and frowning down at the engine. Derek stops with his car door open, not sure if he should offer help.

Stiles sees him then, and he cups a hand to the side of his mouth to call down the street. “Bro! You mind giving me a jump?”

Derek winces. It’s early still, and Stiles’s voice was unnecessarily loud, his hearing probably still shot from the previous night’s party.

He forgoes yelling a response back; instead, he raises his hand with a silent thumbs up and starts his engine, pulling his car up to the Jeep.

Stiles is jittery with energy, his earnest “Thank you” coffee-scented and still a little loud. He steps back from Derek then—not that Derek was planning to complain about their close proximity—and sets his mug on top of the Jeep so he can pull out a tangle of jumper cables. As he hooks them up, he explains, “Got a new job. It’s my first day with these hours, and I guess Roscoe's not happy with the cold morning air."

"Not a morning Jeep," Derek says. He’s thinking _not a morning person_ about Stiles, but that’s a little too obvious and probably a bit too personal for their level of acquaintance.

To Derek’s surprise, Stiles chuckles. “Never has been,” he says. “Usually it works out pretty well for the two of us, but I had to suck it up and take a 9-to-5 this time. I’m not sure which of us is less happy about it, but at least I managed to wake up.”

“You needed coffee, not a jolt of electricity,” Derek says, and Stiles laughs again.

“Touché, dude.” He nods at Derek to start his engine and retrieves his coffee, his long fingers wrapping around the sleek metal surface, his throat bobbing as he drinks. He sighs, closing his eyes, letting the liquid warm him up and help to rinse away whatever shreds of sleep are still clogging up his tired brain.

From inside his car, Derek takes the opportunity to examine him for a minute. It’s the first time he’s seen Stiles without a backwards baseball cap. He hadn’t even been entirely sure of his hair color before. It’s a nice shade of brown—on the darker side, with some natural highlights that give it a glossy shine.

Stiles has always been handsome. Derek isn’t the only person who thinks so; he's got a magnetic presence that makes it hard to look away from him. He’s generally a center of attention at his house parties, something that’s hard to ignore when the crowd spills out onto the porch and clusters into talkative clumps around the yard.

But seeing Stiles in nicer clothes makes Derek recklessly drop the off-limits label he'd placed on him. He’d been keeping his interest at a theoretical level. Stiles is a good-looking guy Derek speaks to now and again. That’s all. There’s been no reason to actually get attached.

Rationally, he knows it makes more sense to find a guy approachable when he’s wearing jeans and t-shirts. The atmosphere of that house, though, brings back too many memories of people Derek doesn't want to be a part of his life now. So a dress shirt (clearly not ironed), khakis, hair that's had some attempt at styling put into it...something about it makes Derek relax.

He gets out of the car, and Stiles opens his eyes, his lashes parting slowly, as though he’d been falling asleep on his feet.

“Go ahead and try it,” Derek says.

The Jeep’s engine rumbles to life. Success, Derek thinks, frustrated with himself for wishing it’d taken longer to get Stiles on the road.

But Stiles doesn’t seem to want to head to work immediately. He leaves his engine running and finishes off his coffee while chatting with Derek—a friendly, easy conversation that Derek finds himself enjoying more than he probably should.

When they part ways, Stiles is grinning at him, and Derek's heart is fluttering. Just a little.

He makes a point of being out of his house at the same time the next morning, and sure enough, Stiles is at his Jeep, shoulders slumped.

"Bro!" he says, face beaming, when Derek pulls his car up next to him. "You're a lifesaver, I swear."

The same thing happens every weekday for...too long.

"You should really take this to a mechanic," Derek says eventually.

He's pretty sure this isn't a sustainable way to keep a car running. Is Stiles getting the car jumped on the way home from work, too, or is it really just the cold mornings that leave it sluggish?

Stiles shrugs off the advice and slams his hood shut with a bang. "Thanks for the input, bro," he says before hopping inside and pulling away. The Jeep’s engine rumbles loudly down the street, somehow sounding as annoyed as Stiles had.

Derek struggles with whether to feel guilty about that exchange. He was only trying to help. Maybe Stiles doesn't have a lot of money to spare?

He thinks about it over the weekend. That house _is_ packed, probably well past its intended capacity. Derek still isn’t completely sure who lives there and who’s visiting, but there are enough guys hanging around on a regular basis that they must all share rooms. Plus, Stiles only seems to own three nice shirts; he cycles through them, sometimes wearing the same one two days in a row. Derek only notices because he’s an observant kind of guy. Obviously not because he’s paying way too much attention to everything about Stiles.

The guys do drink an awful lot of beer, which at first glance is an expense that doesn’t necessarily go with money-pinched wallets. Not that Derek’s judging; he drinks, too, although it's mostly a glass of wine with dinner, maybe some whiskey on the rocks after a long day. From his time sorting garbage, though, Derek’s aware that his neighbors are generally drinking the cheapest brand you can find. He’s also been starting to suspect that half their parties are a ploy to get people to bring them food.

So on Sunday night, when all the windows in the house have finally gone dark and Derek's fairly certain everyone inside is fast asleep, he sneaks out with a box of tools and a work light and slides under Stiles’s Jeep.

It’s actually not as bad as he’d been expecting. If the battery’s not holding its charge, it most likely needs to be replaced. Before ordering a new one, though, he’d wanted to make sure he wasn’t missing anything else. With a vehicle that old, there are any number of other issues that could be causing problems. Fortunately, it looks to be in decent shape for its age. He'll need to order some parts to fix it up for the longer term, but he's able to do some initial work with what he has on hand.

When he’s done, Derek pats the underside of the Jeep and quietly promises, “We’ll get you feeling like yourself again.” That was a stupid move, because one of the issues he does need to fix is a leak, and now his hand’s smeared with oil.

He sighs, snaps off his work light, and pushes himself out from under the Jeep, grimacing at the grease he’s gotten on his clothes. He’s in the middle of considering whether he should bother putting these in his washing machine—he’d gone with threadbare jeans and a ratty old shirt, so throwing them away is another option—when he sees bare feet and plaid pajama pants.

His gaze trails up to a dark line of hair leading into the pants—where it catches briefly, his breath stuttering—then to a bare chest, with well-muscled arms folded across it. He swallows.

"Bro," Stiles says disapprovingly.

Derek gets to his feet and tries to wipe his oily hands off on his jeans. They're definitely a lost cause now.

"I was—" he starts, trying to figure out how to explain being underneath Stiles's Jeep in the middle of the night. He fell? Saw a loose cat?

Before he can get anywhere with those ideas, Stiles pointedly looks down at the incriminating evidence of Derek’s toolbox.

Well. He definitely didn't drag those along while chasing a stray cat across the street.

"I had some time on my hands," Derek says. "I thought I'd take a quick look. See if there's something that's easy to fix."

"Time on your hands," Stiles says. "At 2 AM. You're in bed by 10:30 most nights, bro."

"That's—” Derek starts to protest, even though it’s true; he’d actually fallen asleep at 9 the night before, only waking up and dragging himself off the couch and into bed when he dropped his book on his face. He stops, Stiles’s words catching up to him, and suspiciously asks, “Wait, how do you know that?"

Stiles suddenly looks a little embarrassed and doesn’t reply.

With Derek’s work light shut off, they're lit only by the soft orange glow of the street lamps. It's enough to see Stiles’s expressions, as well as the sleep-mussed state of his hair and the pebbling of his nipples in the cold.

Stiles pushes his crossed arms higher up his chest, as though he sees Derek looking. It's Derek's turn to flush.

"It's not a permanent fix," Derek says. He bends to pick up his toolbox. Stiles's eyes snap away when he straightens.

"Harping on me about the damn mechanic again," Stiles says, sounding tired and grumpy. "Roscoe's doing fine. So what if he's not like your car."

The comment shouldn't hurt, but it kinda does. Derek knows his beige four-door sedan isn't the flashiest or most personality-filled thing. It's _reliable_. He shoves the sharp pang down; he's taking things too personally again. Stiles doesn't mean anything by it. He doesn't know that Derek made a point of buying the most practical car he could or that he’d learned everything he knows about cars from his dad, who was a mechanic.

That's how Derek's parents had met, actually; his mom had taken her car in for regular service, which had swiftly turned into a far more expensive and stressful experience than she’d anticipated. She’d demanded to talk to the owner, outraged over the extra charges the mechanics were trying to trick her into paying for.

Derek's dad had come forward to listen to her concerns. _She was the most beautiful woman who’d ever yelled at me_ , he liked to say while retelling the story. He’d taken her back onto the workfloor after handing her a long coat to cover her blouse and pencil skirt and making sure she exchanged her stilettos for an extra pair of his overlarge boots, stuffed with ripped out magazine pages so they’d stay on. He’d then fixed her car while she’d watched, patiently answering every single question she asked and knocking a significant amount off the final total anyway.

Derek's car is reliable because he bought it with that in mind, but also because he takes good care of it, like he was taught from a young age. Some of his earliest memories are of hanging out in their driveway, handing tools to his dad and standing on his tiptoes to see inside the engine as his dad explained what he was doing.

Stiles's Jeep has clearly been well-loved; Derek isn’t an expert like his dad was, but he knows what to look for and how to tell when an owner’s been neglecting maintenance. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

"Your Jeep needs more work," Derek says. Stiles isn’t wrong about where he was heading with that statement. "But I got enough of a look at it to know what parts to order. As long as things are in stock, I should be able to do the rest next weekend, if you want. It'll run a lot smoother."

Stiles stares at him, then slowly unfolds his arms, letting them drop to his sides. "Why?" he asks.

That's hard for Derek to answer. He clears his throat and shakes the toolbox a bit, letting the metallic jangle settle him. "I'd rather not worry about you," he eventually says. “It’s important for your car to be running well. For your safety.”

Stiles shifts his stance, relaxing his posture, and the streetlamps catch his eyes, almost making them seem to glow. Derek forces himself to not duck his head or be the first to break the slightly intense eye contact.

"The last time I took Roscoe in," Stiles says, "they basically refused to work on him. They kept telling me it'd be less expensive and a lot less of a hassle to junk him and start over."

"People don't always value things the same way," Derek says.

Stiles reaches out and touches the hood of his Jeep with the tips of his fingers. It’s an unexpectedly tender gesture that makes a lump spring to Derek’s throat for some reason. "They don't," he agrees. He looks at Derek, thoughtfully examining him for a long moment, then asks, "You really think you can fix him up?"

"I can," Derek says.

Stiles nods. “Okay,” he says. He pats the Jeep—an affectionate goodnight—and turns to head back to his house. He stops after only a few steps and turns back. "Thanks, Derek," he says.

"No problem, Stiles," Derek says, his heart warm, despite the evening chill. There’s a breeze beginning to pick up, gusting down the street.

Stiles, who must be much colder than Derek, bites his lip and looks at his house. Its windows are still dark and silent, the rest of his roommates slumbering peacefully while he stands outside in the dark. He looks back at Derek. "Maybe you'd let me buy you coffee sometime? Or dinner?"

"Sure," Derek says, too quickly for it to be a casual response. Unthinkingly, he taps his toolbox against the side of his leg.

Stiles's gaze darts down to it. "Not as payment," he clarifies. "I'll pay you for the stuff with Roscoe. I'm not a cheapskate. I'd just...like to have dinner with you, if that's okay." He looks nervous.

"You don't have to pay me," Derek says.

He forges on when Stiles's expression tightens, clearly ready to argue the point. They'll hash that out later. Derek can always quote him a figure with a significant amount knocked off the total.

"Dinner with you would be nice," Derek says. "I'd really like that."

Stiles smiles at him, almost shyly. "Okay," he says. "G’night, Derek."

"Goodnight, bro," Derek says, grinning now, unable to stop the happiness from beaming out of him.

Stiles's laugh echoes down the street. "Oh shut up," he says, rubbing at the back of his neck in embarrassment, but still grinning. It makes his hair stick up even more. Derek’s not sure he’s ever looked more attractive. "You were really hot, okay? I was trying to...distance myself. Make sure you knew I wasn't trying to hit on you or anything."

"It worked," Derek says. Tonight definitely caught him by surprise. A part of him’s still wondering if he'll wake up tomorrow and find out it was all a dream.

But Stiles comes closer. He gets a hand on Derek's jaw and tilts his face until their mouths meet.

It feels real, Derek thinks, then stops thinking.

When Stiles steps back, he looks cocky again, like that guy Derek first saw on the porch. Derek couldn’t be more into it.

"Well, this is me hitting on you," Stiles says. "Just so there's no confusion."

"Got it," Derek says.

***

Derek gets invited to the next party after that. The guys all turn out to be nice; they're friendly and welcoming, and their off-key singing doesn’t sound quite as bad from inside the house. Plus, there’s a lot less frenzied making out and near-orgies than he’d been picturing—usually dejectedly, with Stiles at the heart of them. It actually looks like one of the groups is trying to take over a corner of the living room for some type of board game he doesn’t recognize.

He still kinda hates it.

It doesn’t take long before Stiles grabs him by the hand and tugs him out of the corner he'd tucked himself into. "Wanna grab a pizza box and get outta here?" he asks.

"I've got wine," Derek says, trying not to sound too relieved.

Stiles laughs and takes the time to kiss him before snagging a box on the way out, handing it to Derek to carry. "Then I don't need this," he says, draining the last swallow from his beer can and dropping it carefully into the recycling bin, smirking at Derek the entire time.

"Shut up," Derek says, even though Stiles hadn't actually said anything about their first interaction. He didn't need to.

"You had a weird way of flirting," Stiles says.

"I wasn't flirting," Derek protests. Then, because their first few dates went too well to think otherwise, "It worked, didn't it?"

"Take me home and I'll show you how well it worked," Stiles says.

He's wearing a backwards baseball cap. He's grinning. He's beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/)! Or twitterficcing out in the wild. The current rate will not continue, though.
> 
> PSA: plz don't dig around in people's trash without asking, folks. Good thing Stiles finds it weirdly charming. (Although that's mostly just because he'd been waiting for a good excuse to talk to his hot neighbor.)


End file.
